EDITORIAL

Deep-Six Trade Pacts

President Bush has submitted "free trade" deals with Peru,
Colombia and Panama to Congress, hoping to put some life back into
the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas. He also is submitting a
deal with South Korea, just under the deadline to get "fast track"
consideration by this summer.

Democratic Congressional leaders have demanded changes to some of
the worst aspects of the trade deals the Bush adminstration has
negotiated. For example the Democrats would require that trading
partners adopt and enforce International Labor Organization
standards. The Bush deals only require countries to enforce their own
labor laws, which may or may not meet ILO standards. On the
environment, the Dems insist that nations implement and enforce
common environmental agreements.

In the case of Colombia, the Washington Post reported April 10
that at least 400 union members have been killed by paramilitary
death squads, allegedly in collaboration with the country's
intelligence service, since President Alvaro Uribe took office in
2002.

At least two US firms have been implicated in anti-union violence
in Colombia, the Post reported. An Alabama coal company, Drummond, is
being sued in US District Court by Colombian workers who accuse
company executives of contracting with paramilitary groups to kill
three union leaders. Colombian prosecutors are also investigating the
smuggling of 3,000 assault rifles in 2001 to a Chiquita Brands
International dock in northern Colombia; the weapons wound up in the
hands of paramilitary fighters, according to a report by the
Organization of American States.

The Bush administration knew about the notorious anti-union
violence in Colombia but it didn't bother to press Uribe for labor or
human rights protections. Congress should reject these deals
outright. Side deals on labor rights and the environment have proven
to be unenforceable anyway, and Democrats have no reason to trust the
good faith of Bush or his trade negotiators. For every objectionable
feature Congressional Democrats are able to identify there may be a
half-dozen bugs hidden in the paperwork.

For example, Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch (tradewatch.org)
noted that the Peru and Panama deals threaten prevailing-wage laws
and Buy-American and anti-offshoring laws. The Peru pact contains a
provision requiring Peru to open its social security system to
foreign private investment. (Could there be a secret provision that
will end up privatizing the US Social Security system? Are we
paranoid to consider that possibility?)

Unforeseen consequences are one of the perils of trade
agreements. Global Trade Watch noted that the World Trade
Organization's enforcement panel recently ruled that the US
government failed to comply with a 2005 order to relax the US ban on
Internet gambling. So the US must pay damages to Antigua, the
Caribbean island nation that challenged the ban. Or Antigua could
suspend its observance of copyright and patent protections, allowing
high-tech pirates to set up shop in the island nation.

The WTO ruling also threatens state and federal gambling laws
unrelated to online gaming as potential trade barriers. The European
Union already has threatened a WTO challenge of US gambling laws. US
trade negotiators opened the door in 1995 when they agreed to a
"gambling and betting services" subcategory of "recreational
services." State attorneys general were not meaningfully consulted
and Congress failed to review the pact in detail due to fast-track
procedures, which limits congressional review. The WTO General
Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) allows nations to "take back"
service sectors from WTO jurisdiction, but only after compensating
trading partners for "lost business opportunities."

"We knew about the outrageous over-reach of the WTO into
non-trade matters. What we didn't know is that the US [Trade
Representative] could make mistakes of this magnitude -- signing
up extremely sensitive areas of domestic law to WTO jurisdiction --
and then refuse to correct the enormous error when it was pointed
out," said Global Trade Watch Director Lori Wallach. "These
agreements need to be vetted more closely by states and by Congress.
That scrutiny cannot occur under the current failed fast-track
procedure."

Rather than pausing to reexamine the GATS agreement, Wallach
noted, the federal government is negotiating to expand the scope of
the WTO agreement. Trading partners are demanding that the US cover
many more sectors under the terms of the agreement -- including
energy services, higher education services, medical services and
more. Many of these matters are regulated by states, but again state
officials are not being meaningfully consulted about hidden dangers
or these complex negotiations.

The Citizens Trade Campaign (citizenstrade.org) has released a
letter from 713 national and local labor, religious, civil rights,
environmental, farm, consumer and related groups that will oppose any
new grant of fast-track trade authority to President Bush. Fast-track
authority, which allows the president to submit trade deals for an
up-or-down vote, ends June 30.

"Democrats came to a majority in no small part because scores of
new members won election by opposing the Bush trade policy, so it is
inconceivable to us that the new Democratic majority would provide
new authority on trade to President Bush," said James P. Hoffa,
Teamsters president and a CTC Executive Committee member.

Democrats would not be in the majority were it not for the 37 new
"fair-trade" members of Congress, all of whom defeated "free-trade"
Republican incumbents.

Free-trade expansion to Central and South America promises to
send more US industrial jobs south while economic disruption --
particularly on farms -- can be expected to send more Central and
South American workers north in search of service jobs, as we already
have seen with millions of Mexican workers displaced under the North
American Free Trade Agreement.

Stall Immigration Reform

President Bush has called on Congress to enact immigration reform
by August, but Democrats have no reason to hurry on that initiative,
either. Bush knuckled under to the xenophobic elements of his party
in proposing to require immigrants to return to their home countries
and pay a $10,000 fee before they could be put in line for permanent
residency. This effectively puts a green card out of reach of all but
the well-to-do in Third-World countries such as Mexico.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has told the White House
that Bush must produce at least 70 Republican votes in the House
before she will consider bringing up an immigration bill for a vote,
Jonathan Weisman wrote in the Washington Post. Pelosi said she will
not seek to enforce party discipline on the issue after many of her
party's conservatives had to weather attacks in the last election
because of the party's support for immigration reform.

Pelosi knows she cannot trust Bush. Dems should oppose any "guest
worker" provisions that allow employers to import foreign workers at
substandard wages and working conditions. These provisions amount to
indentured servitude for the imported workers -- who would not be
able to bring their families -- but they still would take jobs away
from citizens.

There is no shortage of labor in the United States. There is a
shortage of jobs that pay a living wage. Congress should not address
immigration "reforms" until it first provides for wages that lift
American workers and their families out of poverty. -- JMC